Alice Randall - My Country Roots: The Ultimate MP3 Guide to Americas Original Outsider Music

Copyright 2006 Alice Randall, Carter Little and Courtney Little

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotation in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Naked Ink, a Division of The General Trade Book Group of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc., P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, Tennessee, 37214.

ISBN-10: 15955558608

ISBN-13: 978-1-59555-860-2

Printed in the United States of America.

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A Word Of Caution:

Downloading or transferring music without proper permission or payment is illegal and punishable by law. The authors of My CountryRoots believe you should pay to play, whether its a song or an album, and they intend for this book to be used solely in conjunction with the practice of legal downloading. There are very few songs that may not be available for digital download online at this time. So, if you want to add Garth Brooks to a list, or someone else you may not be able to find, you must purchase their albums through the appropriate online or local retailers and then transfer those recordings to your computer. Show your support of the hard-working songwriters and musicians who make this music possible. Pay to play. Thank you.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank those people who have kindly contributed their talent and time towards the successful completion of this book, with particular humble thanks to the following: Rebekah J. Whitlock, Bo Spessard, Susan Nadler, John Huie, Rodd Essig, Evelyn Schriver, Austin Gray, Lindsey Jamieson, Caroline Randall Williams, Ralph Murphy, D.K. Barton, Vivian Williams, Mimi Oka, David Ewing, Amanda Little, and Sophie Simmons.

Dedication

Its been rough and rocky traveling but Im finally standing uprighton the ground.

Willie Nelson, Me and Paul

To Frank Little, who was lovingly raised on this music and departed us wishing for this book.

And to the songwriters we have known and loved: Steve Earle and Allison Moorer; Bob McDill and Bobby Braddock; Mark Sanders and Marshall Chapman; Ray Kennedy and Robert Jetton; Don Shlitz and Matraca Berg and Harry Stinson; Guy Clark and David Olney; Kevin Welch and Willis Alan Ramsey and J.C. Crowley; Bob Doyle and Garth Brooks and Pat Alger; Marcus Hummon and Jeff Hanna and Bruce Bouton; Tia Sillers and Radney Foster; John Hartford and Anders Osborne; Jonathan Long and Rowland Stebbins; Shannon Lawson and Dave Coleman; Michael Merenda and Richard Upchurch; Colin Linden and Carter Wood; Harlan Howard and Mickey Newberry; Amy Grant; Rodney Crowell; Don Schlitz; and Bob Delevante, who took our photograph.

Table of Contents

Country music. Is it...

A hard music for a hard people, or clich music for a sentimental people? Do all country songs sound alike, or is country music as diverse as the nation that birthed it? Three chords and the truth, or reverb, synthesizers, and platitudes? Intricate psychological, social, and political observations, or rants about Mama, Prison, and Work? Racist, or class-conscious, or both? A genre heavily influenced by European music, or a genre heavily influenced by African-American instruments, blues progressions, and jazz solos? Warmed over rock n roll, or birthed from the cradle of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry?

Country music is all of the above. Love it or hate it, theres more to this genre than most people recognize. No genre of music deals with a more diverse body of subject matter, provides a more mature perspective, or draws from a wider range of conflicting impulses than Country.

This is a kind of last will and testament, except you dont have to wait for me to die to get whats coming to you. I want you to have a big time while I can enjoy knowing youre having a big time.

There are some things you need to remember and some things you need to forget. You learn that in seventy-five years on this earth and fifty-two years in the music business.

Forget they called me No Show Jones. Forget Ralph Emery and T. Tommy Cutrer tagged me The Possum after I looked real bad on the White Lightning album cover. Forget the drugs and the alcohol and that old story nobody ever got right about me riding to town on a lawn mower to get a drink.

You can even forget that I charted 166 singles. The ladies at Bandit Records, Susan Nadler and Evelyn Shriver, tell me thats more than any artist in any format of music. Forget that, too.

Remember this. Out of those 166 songs, He Stopped Loving Her Today is a favorite song of mine. When we first cut it, I thought it was too sad. Fans proved me wrong. She Thinks I Still Care and Walk Through This World With Me are also favorite songs of mine. When I pass away, let those three recordings be what remains of me on this earth.

But thats not all I leave behind. I got more from seventy-five trips around the sun than the songs I sang. I got the songs I heard and loved.

It started for me when I was seven years old, in the part of east Texas they call the Big Thicket. My daddy got our family a radio, and thats when I first heard Wabash Cannon Ball and The Great Speckle Bird.

I leave you my respect for Roy Acuff. I leave you the thrill it was for me to come to Nashville and work with him, laugh with him, and be sad with him. I leave you the thrill it always was for me to step on the Opry stage with Bill Monroe. Acuff and Monroethats the first piece of your inheritance.

The second piece is Hank Williams, Senior. It was back in 1947 or 1948 when I first heard Hank Williams. I flipped over his voice. I still do. My favorite Hank Williams song is You Win, Again. Use My Country Roots to find your way to some Hank Williams you havent heard in a long time, or to some Hank Williams you have never heard before. Hank Williamss voice is just simply the best.

The last thing Im leaving you is my respect for Merle Haggard. Merle Haggard is one of the best songwriters who ever lived. Nobody whos ever come after is any better than he is.

I first met Merle Haggard in Bakersfield, California in 1962. We were at the same radio station to promote our records. I was there with She Thinks I Still Care and he was there with Sing Me a Sad Song.

Forty some years later, were doing a new record this year. Hes recording five of my songs and Im recording five of his. Its going to be a big time. When you download those cuts, you can join the party.

The book youre holding in your hands now, My Country Roots, is going to take some of my old friends who died in the twentieth century into the twenty-first. And its going to take a look at a whole lot of new Country singers and a few living legends. Thats why Im here to tell you about it. This book gives you a new way to find the great pickers, the great singers, and the great songwriters who are my country roots.

Im a traditionalist. I love the old music. I love the ways we used to recordbut legal music downloading is also one of the great things about modern technology.

Fishing in the middle of a lake, a hundred miles from electricity, with a little machine in your hands, you can have a hundred of Acuffs songs, a hundred of Bill Monroes, a hundred of Hank Williamss, a hundred of Merle Haggards, a hundred of mine, and whatever else you want to listen to, tucked in your pocket on a mp3 player. But you got to know where to go to find what you like. This book will help with that.

There is nothing in the world like country music. A great country song will tear your heart out. Country songs go with you to work, sit with you when youre crying, slide in the room when youre loving, and hang around in your heart when the loving leaves. A great country record can help turn a body on and will help hold a life together when everything falls apart.